


a little fairy tale in the dark

by Metronomeblue



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe- Orthax Wins, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood Drinking, Briarwood Parallels, Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Canon-Compliant through the Chroma Conclave Arc, Character Turned Into Vampire, Chroma Conclave Arc, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dark Magic, Deal with a Devil, Demon Deals, Demonic Possession, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, I wrote it for Halloween and then edited it later because Halloween came and went, Moonweaver worship, No Vecna Arc, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Post-Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Sort Of, Soul Selling, The Raven Queen is fond of Vox Machina, Vecna is Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Fic, Y'all I don't know what this is, sort of? as happy as I could make it while staying true to form, unholy matrimony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22169416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: “And what more can you give me, Percival?” Orthax’s voice rips through him, like it’s shattering the bonds between atoms, forming fissures in the walls of every cell in his body. “I already have your soul. What more are you willing to offer for her?”“Anything,” Percy grits through his teeth, another wave of agony rocking through his body, smoke curling out the edges of his mouth. “Anything.”And he gives everything.~*~*~*~Once upon a time, Vex made a deal with Saundor in the Feywild, and it all fell apart after that.(Mostly I just wanted more Percy/Vex Briarwood Parallels fic)
Relationships: Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III & Orthax & Vex'ahlia, Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia, background Cassandra de Rolo/Kynan Leore, background Keyleth/Vax'ildan/Shaun Gilmore, background Scanlan Shorthalt/Pike Trickfoot
Comments: 14
Kudos: 101





	a little fairy tale in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost- this is a little strange, structure-wise, because it is very much inspired by traditional fairy tales. The style is a little odd, even compared to what I usually do. But I don't hate it, so I'm still going to post it.
> 
> Second of all, I feel it is prudent to mention that Vex and Percy do both die in this fic... around the same way they do in the campaign. I didn't check off the Major Character Death warning because like. It's lore at this point. But later on, many of the main characters do die of old age, which also feels different from Major Character Death to me? So I figured I'd put in this Less Intimidating Warning. 
> 
> Third... this is just a Briarwood Parallels fic. "I broke the world for us" indeed.

“And what more can you give me, Percival?” Orthax’s voice rips through him, like it’s shattering the bonds between atoms, forming fissures in the walls of every cell in his body. “I already have your soul. What more are you willing to offer for her?”

“Anything,” Percy grits through his teeth, another wave of agony rocking through his body, smoke curling out the edges of his mouth. “Anything.”

And he gives _everything_.

* * *

Vex died. It was such a stupid thing, really, in the end. Fire. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal normally, but after Saundor... Saundor changed her. And that was another kind of heartache. Saundor had fought them down to the wire, brought all of them to their knees and forced Vex to give in, and the price she paid was steep. She left with Fenthras, they all left alive, but she was bound to him, made a part of his bog, bound to the decaying earth and the mud and the rot of the water. Tied inseparably to the decay. She put on a brave face- and exceptionally well, Percy would admit- but they could all see how much it scared her.

But she had Fenthras. She had the most beautiful bow, and it breathed in her hands, and when she shot it was effortless. She could almost forget the price she’d paid when she used it. And it was fine. (It wasn’t fine.) But it was fine. They all began to ice over their wounds, refine their false hope that when this was over they could undo what was being done to her. 

She clung to Vax like a lifeline. He started to share a room with her instead of Keyleth, and who could fault him? Vex sobbed soundlessly into his chest each night, trying not to scream as she felt the blood turn to sap in her veins. She always eventually passed out, woke up to find the faint green tint to her skin deepened every morning. She took to wearing gloves, tugging her collars up higher, buttoning her armor up further. She stopped looking in mirrors. She stopped looking them in the eye. 

She still sought Percy out, though, because even if he didn’t pretend not to notice she was changing, he had the manners and the kindness to treat her like herself anyway. She felt less and less like herself every day, and Vax and Percy tied her back. Trinket, too, dear, sweet Trinket, who snuffled at her cheeks and told her she smelled “funny but still Vex” and didn’t understand why it made her cry. Keyleth told her she looked pretty like this, green and gold like a flower, and didn’t understand why Vex’s face twisted, why Vax pulled her away. Scanlan didn’t seem to notice, just kept asking when she and Saundor were going to ‘seal the deal.’ When she asked him if he cared, Grog just gave her a long hug and asked if her bruises were still purple or if they’d be green now. She let him hit her just to see.

They were a pretty golden-green.

She cried.

She could feel him, Saundor. She could feel him murmuring and growling at the back of her head like a second conscience. She didn’t want it. She wanted her mind to be her own, wanted herself to stay herself, but his voice got louder and louder until she couldn’t make decisions without asking him. It hurt. Everyone grew more and more confused, worried, and she couldn’t tell them because every time she tried she felt him close her throat. She hated him. She hated him as much as she hated her father. She wanted to rip him out of her the same way she wished she could carve her father’s blood from her body. She’d almost rather die, than be like this.

Percy died first, of course, blood burbling in his throat even as Ripley’s last, triumphant shot echoed across Glintshore. That hurt, too. It hurt worse than she thought it would.

Vex never felt more like a monster than she did when she watched two trees, wet with blood, sprouting from Ripley’s corpse. One in the heart, one in the throat. The rest of them mutilated Ripley, dismembered her, but it was Vex who killed her. It was Vex who felt only a sharp, vicious stab of contentment in knowing she’d finished Percy’s list. One last quarry. One last hunt. For him.

It felt good in the same way it felt awful.

When Percy wakes, Vex is there. Beautiful, terrible, frightening Vex. Her eyes are the same deep brown, even if her skin is a soft green now and her blood runs gold like honey, and he still thinks she’s the most wonderful of them all. But he won’t say it. Not yet.

They face Vorugal, and he falls, and they kiss. It’s perfect. It’s horrible. Saundor’s voice echoes through her head, but she pushes it back. She lets herself enjoy the feeling of Percy’s cold, chapped lips on hers, the feeling of his cold hand on the side of her face. Vex feels something shift in her throat, and she coughs up rotting leaves into the snow. Percy holds her steady as she retches, murmuring soothingly, and she wants to weep, but her tears are thick and sticky and gum up her lashes. She can’t even cry as herself anymore. 

“He won’t let you betray him,” Percy murmurs, and Vex’s blood burns, her heart rages, but she made a deal. She made a deal and now she has to honor it. Percy kisses the wet, amber resin from her cheeks and apologizes. He has never stopped apologizing to her. For hurting her feelings, for getting her killed, for lying, for doing something stupid, for caring about her. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, lips just millimeters from her skin. “For causing you pain.”

She kisses him, this time. Knowing. The taste of rot fills her mouth again, and to spit it out is like acid, but Vex has never been tamed before. She will not bend now. She loves Percy. If she is to spend eternity bound to a man she does not love, she will have this first. Saundor’s voice quiets in the back of her head, understanding her meaning, understanding her- perhaps- and though it burns low and bitter in the back of her head, it doesn’t rise the same.

They fight Thordak, and Vex burns. Like her mother, her beloved mother, like all the Fire Ashari, like a beautiful flower turned to ash. Saundor’s gift was little use against fire, and little more against a red dragon’s fire. All he did was make Vex even more vulnerable to Thordak’s breath. 

Vax rages, striking furiously, blindly, carving into the dragon that has now murdered the two people dearest to him in the whole world. 

Percy screams. He screams and screams and screams. The world does not answer.

Three days later, in the cold, dark night of Whitestone, Orthax does. 

“I’ll give you anything,” Percy says, and he means it this time. Delilah Briarwood’s voice ripples through his mind, _I broke the world for us_ , but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. “You can have all of me, I don’t care, just bring her back.”

“Is that the contract, then?” The fiend asks, its raven skull grinning at him.

“No.” Percy knows now. He knows better. He sits, pulls a piece of parchment towards himself. He begins writing. He calls on every trick he knows, every specification he can. “I want you to resurrect her as she should have been, without Saundor’s bond, without his shadow corrupting her. Whole and alive, soul and mind and body, memory intact, no physical or mental wounds beyond those which she had already sustained prior to the day she died. Upon her death you will allow her soul to pass whole and unmolested to the astral sea.” Percy pauses, looking at the smoke already curling around his hands. “I will give you anything of mine I have the power to give, if you will only bring her back.” A thick, inky scrawl fills the other place on the contract.

Orthax smiles, and Percy feels, terribly, joyfully, the bargain set into him.

“Deal.”

It’s worth it. It’s worth it. For _her_. 

Vox Machina wakes the next morning to find Percy gone. They search and search and search, find him sitting crumpled and tired beside the bed in Vex’s room. It should be empty. It should be. But it’s not. He looks half-dead, face hollow and tight. Vex is curled up in the blankets, sleeping peacefully. 

Vax cries out, almost unwillingly, stumbles to her side, tears pouring from his eyes. She blinks awake, looks at him with confusion, then concern, then dawning comprehension as she remembers. They hug so tightly it’s barely a hug, two halves of one whole. 

Vex looks like Vex again. Her blood is red, her skin is a soft, warm brown. Her mind is her own. They keep asking her how, how, and she cannot answer. One by one, they turn to Percy, hollowed and broken, and one by one they understand.

“Percy-“ Vax begins, Vex still held to his chest, and the other man just shakes his head.

“I was already damned,” he says, smiling. He’s talking to Vax, but he’s looking at Vex. He looks happy. Truly happy. It breaks Vax’s heart. “At least now it’s worth something.”

Vex pulls herself from her brother’s grasp and falls into Percy’s arms. Wordless. Hard. He falls back, half of a laugh caught in his throat. She falls to her knees beside him, the two of them wrapped together, and hugs him so tightly he can feel the warmth of her like sunlight. 

He won’t let her thank him. He just apologizes.

Raishan dies, too, and Percy dies again. Scanlan dies again. They keep losing. Bits and pieces of their lives sniffed out, ripped away. Scanlan loses something, deep inside of himself, and he walks away in a fit of fury and loss. Percy’s loss is... less obvious. It takes them all a little bit to see it, to understand. 

He seems alright for so long. It doesn’t come on fast, like Saundor’s influence. They should have known, from the first time Orthax crept into his soul. They should have remembered that shadows never truly disappear. He holds together until they drop into Hell, until he’s tasting a person’s soul for the first time in almost a year, until he’s signing over a fragment of his own soul to yet another dark force.

Vex clings to him a little, after that. Feels like she’ll lose him if she doesn’t hold on.

But they get out. They get out, all in one piece- save for poor Doty, but even Tary admits it would’ve been a struggle to try and get him at that point. It’s only once they settle in that the changes begin to creep and crawl and carve into them. 

She first feels it when she hunts the Grey Render. Her blood runs faster, her heart pumps stronger, the whole world seems louder and wilder and more hers. She feels as if she could lose herself, in the dark, covered in blood and mud and sweat. She feels like she could become something else entirely, if she isn’t careful, and a part of her yearns for it. She’s a Ranger, and though she itched for freedom when Saundor bound her to the earth, a part of her has always belonged to it. She feels one with the shadows and the moon and the trees, the Parchwood like home all around her.

But it’s missing things. Her brother. Percy. Keyleth and Pike, Grog and Scanlan. Even Tary. She has to pull herself away, tug all of herself back in, wind it all back tight.

A week later Percy begins to cough. It’s like the very beginning all over again, and they worry. At first it’s just a nervous little cough, a bit of a wheeze. Then there’s blood, and Percy weakens, body wracked with pain and lethargy. Vex and Cassandra talk more, discuss doctors and clerics and Pike, Keeper Yennen or Keyleth or or or. Percy refuses, just shakes his head and wipes the blood from the corner of his mouth. 

“I agreed to this,” he says quietly. “I made a deal.”

There’s something defeated in his face. Resigned. Cassandra shakes her head, walks briskly away as if she can’t bear to look. 

He gets better within the month, but he gets worse within the week.

His skin begins to flake away, and Vex feels true fear. Soon his hands are just bone, connected by what she assumes is magic and nothing else. The bone is gold, as if dipped in liquid metal. His hands seem fragile, the exposed, glittering gold skeleton of a man touched by unnatural things. He weeps, the first night he sees them like that, the first night he stops feeling anything in his hands, finally understanding what he has given, and Vex dries his tears with her fingertips, the barest kiss to his cheeks. She is afraid to put too much pressure on him. She is afraid to break him.

He pulls her close, with his newly cold, jagged-edged hands. He presses his face into her neck. He apologizes. She shakes her head and digs her fingers into his back and his hair and his skin. She doesn’t sleep that night.

She sleeps less and less at night. 

His hands stay like that for a long time, and he wears gloves to hide them. He refuses to take them off, doing his best to avoid the evidence of his own sins. Vex takes his hands in her own, pulls each glove off with care. She presses his delicate, fragile fingers to her mouth, kisses each knuckle and ridge of bone. 

“Vex’ahlia,” he says roughly, and she can feel the reproach in it.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, and he pulls his hands from hers to bring her in close, to rest his chin on the crown of her head and press her face to his shoulder.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Time passes. It keeps passing. Percy delegates work, sends Tary to oversee repairs, invents what he can with his shaking, inefficient hands. He tries not to dwell on the loss of so much of his pride and his work. Cassandra leads Vex into diplomacy. Etiquette. The processes of the Whitestone trade, the ruling of the city. 

She and Percy marry, suddenly. He places the ring on a chain around his neck. They tell nobody.

Percy begins to learn more, to refine his limited skill in magic, to expand it, until soon he is wielding his parasitic shadow and vicious spellcraft with all the ease of a gun. It’s new, and a part of him hates it, but it offers him agency. It offers him the illusion of defense. Vex wishes she could hate it. Instead she feels a flush of relief.

She loves him terribly, her darling, dark husband, wrapped in shadow and spattered with blood, magic dripping from his clever fingers and smoke curling from his smile. She loves Percy best when they’re alone, when he presses close to her and wraps himself in her arms and breathes her name like it’s something holy. She loves him best when he’s all hers, her greedy heart gorging itself on her beloved returning her affection. She presses her lips to his gold-spattered hands where Orthax has taken pieces of him away, murmurs that she loves him even more for his incompleteness. Loves to feel those cold, false-boned fingers curl around her waist.

She knows that Percy mourns his skills, his tinkering, his craft. It’s always been so dear to him, but every time he looks to Vex, alive and free, his heart thrums up. It was worth it. For her. “They are not worth you,” he said once, and he says it again and again when she looks at his skeletal, devoured hands and almost weeps. _Anything_ , he said. And he meant it.

He stops being able to feel his left eye the next year, and Vex’s bitter tears fall on his cheek when he asks her to look. Orthax takes things from him only if he loves them, if he feels pride in them. His engineering talent. His aim. He wonders that Orthax hasn’t taken more. Hasn’t taken Vex. She persists in trying to care for his eye, and he reluctantly allows her. He knows he’ll never get it back.

Or at least that’s what he believes. Several months later, the feeling returns in his left eye, and so does the sight. He opens it and it’s jet black, Vex’s hands coming up to caress the side of his face. “ _Darling_ ,” she says, and her voice aches. In time he learns that Orthax doesn’t want to take Percy all at once. Sometimes he gives things back. Sometimes he changes them first, makes them his and returns them like unwanted gifts. He doesn’t want a corpse, after all.

He wants a _host_. Soon enough Percy’s lungs strain full of smoke, billowing from him in wisps. Vex tastes it when they kiss, and he tries to turn away, but she chases him every time. He’s become this for her. Selfish as he is, cruel enough to drag her back from death, it was for love of her, and she refuses to turn from that. She knows, had the resurrection not worked for him, she would have done the same. She knows the only divide between them is a coin toss.

Soon, both eyes are black, and the shadows cling to him even in the day, like dark ink in water. They seem to like Vex, Orthax seems to like her, gentle curls of grey looping around her hand when it twines with Percy’s, around her neck when she kisses his cheek. It wants to draw her in, somewhere between corrupting and protective, and Percy feels an ugly, sick gratitude for that. He loves her so, after all, and there’s nothing more frightening than losing her again. Soon, light becomes intolerable to him, and he half-sees Delilah Briarwood in his reflection when he can bear to see it at all.

Vax stalks the edges of the world, caught between horror and relief at his sister’s rising, even if the cost was so steep. She’s still Vex, still his dear sister. She’s just… a little different. Sharper. Colder. Hungrier. He hates Percival for it. Hates him for making this from what should have been a lighter love, for giving himself entirely to the darkness they once saved him from, that he once believed his sister kept at bay. He loves Percival for it, too, for loving Vex enough to hand his whole self over to hell rather than live without her. Vax understands that.

But he stays away, sequestered with Keyleth and Shaun for fear that his patron will reach from the realm of fate and lay a target on Vex’s back. He knows Vex is not undead, not a revenant or a wraith. Her heart beats. Her flesh bleeds. She breathes. She’s a strange new creature, full of bloodlust and bound to the wilderness, tied to Percy and his shadow. 

One night, a little over three years after Percy made his second deal, Vex begins to hunger.

She thirsts, stomach clawing at itself, mind turned incessantly towards satisfying that urge, and it frightens her. It’s not like Saundor, internal rather than external, but it’s change. It’s change unasked for, and it hurts. Orthax laughs, reminds Percy that there is a price to every gift, and Percy takes a knife from the table, rolls up his sleeve, and slits his own wrist unhesitatingly. She drinks, and drinks, and drinks, and she’s grateful that Percy is willing to give so much. She’s a little like a vampire, they think, but they can’t be certain. Her heart beats and her breath is warm, but every few days she drinks Percival’s blood like it’s all she needs to live. It kindles something, the first taste, and the urge doesn’t disappear. She’s so hungry, thrilling at the barest chance of a hunt. Percy obliges, running, hiding, letting her chase him down in the snow. He bleeds so beautifully, tastes like smoke and snow and pine sap, and every time she drinks from him he whispers that he loves her. The bond between them, the bond between them and Orthax, is held by their pain. It hurts to live, it hurts to be like this, all shadow and blood, but they’re together, and that is enough.

She only worries about time. She was always going to live longer than him, and it breaks her heart each time she presses her face to Percy’s throat and hears the fragile, mortal heartbeat there. She doesn’t want to be parted from him. Not ever. Not now that they’re losing so much.

But as time passes, Percy remains. Too young, too tired, smoke curling from his fingers and magic chasing his every step. Orthax wants him forever, and forever he will have. It takes them four years to notice, and when Vex brushes his hair from his eyes and whispers, “You look the same,” full of painful hope, he sheds a single tear before he kisses her. 

Whitestone fears them. Not as they feared the Briarwoods, for everyone knows that Percy’s bloodshed is done far from home or in defense of it, that Vex’s thirst can only be slaked by her beloved husband, but they are feared nonetheless. Cassandra takes the reins, leaves Vex and Percy to be advisors in the hope that nobody will think too much of her brother and sister-in-law, but everyone knows the secrets they keep. Everyone is aware of the monsters in the castle.

Cassandra is haunted, a little, by the memory of the Briarwoods. She looks at Vex and shudders, looks at Percy like she wants to cry. It takes her time to adjust, to understand that Percy would sooner die than hurt her, that Vex’s control is pure steel. She does understand, after a little space, begins to give Vex responsibility again, to train Percy into taking charge. She understands, as she grows older and they do not, that perhaps she was always going to be this, that she was always meant to be the Baroness. She gives them a little freedom, asks Vex to take charge, asks Percy to repair the city’s defenses. She leads them back to the path, even if she cannot bring them to the light.

They make their home in the darkness, and it is a beautiful home, indeed. Percy turns to the Raven Queen, even as Orthax eats away at the heart of him, lays his crow wings down on her altar and pledges his service to the broken. Vex opens her heart to the Moonweaver, all light and life, love and mischief. She is still so bright in the darkness, and he curls about her like the night cradles the moon. They hold festivals at night, now, and there are more and more lanterns, more candles. Wax and oil become ever more common, pine pitch torches and bonfires lighting the night. Trade flourishes. Half of Whitestone becomes nocturnal, Pelor’s worship sputtering out like a dying flame with his damning silence.

Whitestone loves and fears in turn, and every time Vex attends an evening festival, spends a night of celebration on the arm of her husband, children shy away and parents stare. They are polite- and not the choked, brittle politeness born of fear- but they do not trust these new monsters yet. Vex accepts this, though she weeps into Percy’s shoulder after, every time. He holds her close and apologizes, apologizes, face pressed to her hair in the dark. She tries to be softer, to dull the edges made sharp by the life she’s lived, but it feels wrong. It feels the same way standing in front of the mirror did, the night before they entered Syngorn. Percy himself is different. The people remember the rumors, remember what savage violence he inflicted upon the Briarwoods and their ilk, remember the sweet, bookish boy he had been. They still keep their distance, keep their children close and their animals tied up inside, but they maintain etiquette, treat him with cold respect and gentle sorrow. Percy grits his teeth and nods and accepts the consequences of his failures. He wears new spectacles, the glass tinted to hide his newly black eyes, does his best to hide the smoke and shadows, wears gloves over his golden, skeletal hands. He uses his new magic to form wards, to repel those who intend harm to Whitestone, to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

He turns himself from sorrow and wades into utility. He uses his magic to slaughter those who come to take the city, those who think themselves his successors in dethroning tyrants in Castle Whitestone. They come, time after time, and the citizens of Whitestone board their doors and douse their lights, hoping these invading forces will disappear before they begin to break down doors and windows. They huddle, quiet and stern, armed in their own homes, as self-proclaimed heroes threaten to kill their rulers. They do not understand like Whitestone does. They do not know that not all monsters are the same. Percy learns prevention. He insulates his home, traps the outside edges, makes it known, quietly, that Whitestone will not be taken by either self-righteousness or wicked evil. He and Vex wait at the edges of the forest, the farthest boundaries of town, warding off all manner of would-be conquerors. Orthax sings in them both, and they try not to listen.

The armies stop coming, eventually. 

Years pass. Decades. Percy and Vex hunt, taking down those unlucky few who caught Orthax’s eye, carving swaths of blood through the world. Vex’s thirst grows, and it weakens Percy such that she starves herself. He begs her to drink, as she grows thin and tired, but she only kisses him gently and tells him no. Percy’s body is taken and given and taken and given, Vex holding him close as phantom pain wracks pieces of him that are nothing but bone. 

By the time Vex’s thirst is enough to overcome him, Orthax has fully integrated himself into the very fabric of Percy’s body and soul. Vex drinks and drinks and drinks, until he’s drained and pale and empty, and Orthax returns his blood like nothing happened. It’s horrifying. It’s a gift. Orthax does nothing without a price, though. He’s bound to Percy now, permanently, symbiotic in a way they never were before. Percy shakes, the first time Orthax takes control of his body, present and not present, terrified and angry and sad. His hand raises without his consent, levels his gun at Vex’s side and fires, even as Percy desperately wrenches back enough control to throw himself away. She gasps, holding a hand to her bleeding rib cage as she looks at him.

He shakes, and he cries, and he feels great violence in his bones as he slides down the wall, legs tangled and arms fighting to reach for the gun again.

The smoke rises like a cloak, embraces him like a lover. Vex kneels before him, murmuring gently, bleeding sluggishly from a hole in her side. He weeps into Vex’s mouth as she kisses every inch of skin on his cheeks, whispering “it’s alright, it’s okay, I know, I know, darling,” until he can breathe again.

Sometimes in the night, when Percy sleeps, or in public, mid-sentence, he’ll suddenly shift, overtaken, but mostly Orthax enjoys the thrill. In battle, in bed, during an argument, when Percy’s body is thrumming with energy, when his emotions are vivid and expansive, Orthax will slip in, eyes a glimmering gold and smoke enveloping his host. Vex is used to it, pays no mind in battle and merely whispers to Percy in bed, reaches through the haze, holds his stolen consciousness close knowing that Percy is still the one in control. He laughs, with Percy’s mouth and Percy’s face, kisses her mockingly and tells her how glad he is that he let Percy bring her back. How glad he is to have a taste of her. He spurs Percy on, forces him to move faster, aim more keenly, vicious and uncaring, even as little soft noises of terror slip from Percy’s mouth. 

He’s different, different like before. Himself, mostly, just… a little crueler. Harsher. Dark and angry. But never in a way she can’t take, never enough to hurt her, never to Cassandra, never to his people. He holds it all in, tightly wound and anxious. He keeps the darkness locked into himself as long as he can. And she opens herself to it, accepts the shadow. She revels in it, sometimes, when she chases him down and he trips her up, when he casts Hex on her and she casts Hunter’s Mark on him, the loving, fierce spar of skills between them. They ravage each other, pull apart their self-control and unspool their civility. The smoke ripples over him, her teeth grow long and sharp. Orthax has his fingers in each of them, and he pushes them together like a child with two dolls. They exchange blood, Percy’s blunted teeth deep in her collarbone, Vex drawing happily from his wrist. They scrabble, bloodied and muddy and sweat-soaked on the floor of the forest, swathed in night shadow and the Moonweaver’s light. It’s worship, and it’s war, and it’s theirs.

Percy holds her so tightly, after, when Orthax is gone. He traces the softness of her thighs, kisses the scars across her body. As if to reassure himself he hasn’t added any. He murmurs apologies, murmurs ‘I love you’, runs newly remade hands over her hair and her face and the resistant muscle of her body. There is still a disconnect, in some ways, and Percy makes his presence known in gentleness. She wishes she could rip the demon from his skin. She wishes she could save him.

Vex understands, in a way, what monstrosity made of Sylas Briarwood. She understands the bitterness of love when it comes at the cost of your lover’s soul. She is full of fury, sometimes, overwhelmed with helplessness and the agony of watching Percy melt into Orthax. She grows hungrier and hungrier, and she wonders if she isn’t truly a vampire, if she isn’t something she should be begging her brother to end. 

She asks him one day, “What am I?” Mouth bloody and weight spread over Percy’s prone form. 

“You’re a parasite,” Orthax sneers, grinning at her with an expression she’s never seen on Percy’s face except for when he uses it. “Your soul is bound to his. Your body is bound to his. As long as he lives, so will you, but once he goes....” He laughs, and Vex feels a shudder of relief. She’ll never have to live without him. She’ll never be alone. She kisses him, and though Orthax laughs into her mouth, Percy’s fingers curl tightly, tenderly, in her hair. Relief overtakes them both.

Wherever they go, they go together. 

One day an army comes that doesn’t fall. They fight and fight and fight, and it’s Percy who falls, shadow and blood spilling mixed from his veins. She can smell it, the dark, heavy sweetness of his blood on the air, blood she hasn’t taken. Something in her snaps. Something in her breaks, like it did when Ripley killed him. He’s hers. He’s hers, and only she can break his skin. Something inside her is still so greedy, so hungry, so possessive of what she treasures.  He’s _hers_ , she thinks plaintively, as she rips through them, bare-handed and so fast it scares her. He’s hers to protect, hers to love, hers to _defend_. Their blood drips from her hands, their bodies strewn motionless over the forest floor. She breathes, heartbeat finally slowing again. She stumbles to Percy’s side, ignoring the other bodies. They’ll do some good maybe. They water the Parchwood with their blood.

“Percy, darling,” she rasps, and he reaches up to place a shaking, ungloved hand on her cheek. “Are you- are you alright?”

“Yes,” he says hoarsely, blood glittering where it’s pooled over his neck and shoulders and chest. There’s a huge gash in his front, shoulder to shoulder across his chest. His fingers stroke her face. “You should drink,” he says, softly, roughly. “Please. Vex.”

“You’re hurt, darling, of course I won’t-“ the smell is so much. It’s everywhere. She wants it. She tries not to want it. He laughs, broken and wet with blood, and pulls his head back. Percy offers his bleeding throat to her again freely... and reluctantly, tiredly, she does drink. He moans, arches underneath her as she sinks her mouth into the split crux of his neck and shoulder, lapping and swallowing like a woman dying of thirst. His hand curls around the back of her head and he shakes, lips parted and eyes wide with bliss. She takes him into herself, makes his blood her own. 

“I love you, darling,” she whispers after, pressing her bloody face to his. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he whispers back, black eyes wet and soft as he looks at her. She’s grown used to it, the way the smoke wraps around them both, the way his eyes haven’t been blue for many years, the way sometimes he’ll kill someone and look back to her with a demon’s smile. She’s almost fond of it, in a way. She is a monster now, and so is he, but better to be this than Saundor’s. Better to be Vex’ahlia de Rolo than Vex’ahlia of the Shademurk. Better to be here, swallowing Percy’s blood and pinning poachers to trees with arrows than to be with a man who wanted to own her. Better to be the keeper of a demon than to be kept. She knows that if he could, Percy would let her go. She knows that if he did, she would stay.

Cassandra dies. She is old, and wise, and happy. Her children and their children throng around the bed, the de Rolo family reborn, and she weeps even as she smiles. Percy stands away, in a far corner, already devastated, and she beckons him closer. He holds her hand so gently, thin and fragile as it is, and presses a kiss to the back of it.

“None of that,” she whispers.

“I’m going to miss you.”

“I know.” He won’t look at her, ashamed, and she reaches up to turn his face to hers. “My brave, foolish brother,” she says, and his face tenses. “Take care of them.”

“Of course,” he whispers, shame and sadness mingling in his frown. “As long as I live.”

“Don’t, Percy,” she rolls her eyes, and he half-smiles. “You were always my favorite brother.”

“Oh,” he says, strangled. “Cass-“

“I know I wasn’t your favorite,” she says shrewdly. “But that just means you owe me.”

“Cass-“

“This is your family, too.” He looks at her for the first time, black eyes glossy with tears in his too-young face. “Take care of them.”

“Always.” His grasp tightens, just a little. “I love you.”

“Ha.” Her laugh is a cheerful wheeze. “Love you too, Percival.”

She’s buried during the day. In the crypts, of course, but under Pelor’s light. Percy breaks a little more, at that. The last living of his siblings.

He is alone, the last of the de Rolos, crushed beneath the weight of grief, until Vex takes his hand, pulls him back to his sister’s family- his family. He does take care of them, defends and protects each new generation until his dying day.  


Vex’s thirst grows still, and even Percy cannot satiate her. It terrifies her. She cries and cries, curled up on a bed clawing at her stomach while Percy tries to keep her hands away. He calls Vax, and her brother arrives quickly, black feathers dancing on the wind behind him. 

He bleeds for her. He bleeds for her, and she is calm again, and it hurts even more than hunger. Orthax laughs, the next time she and Vax speak to him, Vax’s mouth thin and sad when he looks at Percy being puppeteered by the fiend. 

“You can only find solace in the blood of the people you love most,” he snarls. “And you have been starving yourself of so many people you love.”

Vex buries her face in her hands and screams until her throat bleeds.

Vax begins visiting twice a week, offering just a little blood. He means to give more, but Vex insists on moderation. She doesn’t want to hurt him the way Percy hurts for her. One of them is too many. At least with Percy she knows she’ll never take too much, knows that his shadow will heal him, that he’ll never go away. With Vax she has no such certainty.

Keyleth’s voice haunts her, after the one time she visits, eyes hard and face set. “We could find a way to make you better,” she insists, Vax’s gaze lingering on Percy’s dark eyes and Vex’s teeth, sharper, longer. “We could break the pact-“

“No.” Despite the intensity of the situation, Percy’s voice is small, sad, insistent. It hurts. “She’ll- she'll die. This is too far gone, Keyleth. I can’t-“

“You can’t what, Percy? She’s becoming a monster. You’ve already become one.” There’s so much loss in her face, so much desperation in her voice, and both of them try in vain not to look at Vex’s mouth buried in Vax’s wrist. 

“The pact was in the gun last time,” Percy whispers, tired. “This time it’s in Vex. If you want to break that pact you’ll have to kill her again.” Vex breaks away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I-“

“Enough,” Vax says, pulling his sister closer. He looks at Keyleth tiredly, reaches up a hand to touch her face. “Cassandra and Tary are gone. Grog will be gone soon. I will be gone. Shaun- Shaun will be gone. Soon it will be you and Scanlan and Pike who are left. And these two.” He sighs, eyes drifting to Percy. “Who does it hurt, Kiki? Me? Him? She’s not Lord Briarwood. She’s not out eating random people. It’s just us.”

“But-“

“I’m going to die before any of you three,” Vax says quietly, and Vex makes a soft, sad noise and buries her face into his shoulder. 

“No, you’re not,” she says. “No.”

“Sorry, Stubby,” he smiles at her. “I drew the short straw on this one.”

“ _No_.” She shakes her head, insistent.

“Yeah, I will.” He kisses her forehead. “And when I do I’ll tell mum all about how you killed dragons and rebuilt a city and married a prince.”

“And became a monster,” Vex finishes, sadly. Vax hushes her, kisses her forehead again, as if to reinforce the gesture.

“No, stubby,” he says. “You’re no monster.”

“I am. I’m-“

“No.” Keyleth looks down, crossing her arms. “He’s right. I- both of you. You’re not- I mean Percy’s been waging war-“

“They come to take Whitestone,” he says tiredly, leaning his head back against the wall to look at her. “I drive them away.”

“Whitestone doesn’t want to be taken,” Vex adds, half-furious, nodding at the window. “We’re not- I don’t think we’re human anymore, but we’re still ourselves, Keyleth. Whitestone doesn’t suffer under our hands.”

“I know,” she says, and she sounds so sad that Vex believes her. “I just- I’m sorry. I know. You both remind me of-“

“Of the Briarwoods,” Percy finishes for her, face contorting. “I know.”

Vax does come back, and Shaun, and Keyleth, and Pike and Scanlan, all of them slowly adjusting to the knowledge that their friends are weathering their own personal private hell. Scanlan offers to Wish them back to themselves, but Percy says quietly that he should only save Vex, if he could, and Vex immediately counters by saying that Percy is the one who’s suffering, and Scanlan can’t bring himself for fear of accidentally killing one of them. The other wouldn’t survive long after that, he knows. He knows.

Pike comes, too, and when she and Scanlan have their children they come to stay, the temple of Sarenrae a bright light in a city of soft shadow. Percy visits it, sometimes, stands just outside the door and thinks about salvation. Pike comes out and holds his hands, reminds him that he’s always welcome. He holds her close, says nothing. The touch of each other burns them a little, but they love each other enough that neither ever bends to it. Scanlan never lets up, never treats them any different except for a joke. Their children know him as Uncle Percy, as family, even if they can see through the quiet, gentle man to something which frightens them a little. It’s the instinctual fear of all who have only known him as this, the fear of something monstrous, teetering on the edge of violence. They grow out of it, and he’s grateful- he’s so grateful- that in time they continue to treat him and Vex like favored relatives, that the Trickfoot family remains in Whitestone as a bastion of gnomish light and life. 

Grog lasts a good long time, for a Goliath. Makes it all the way to 130, somehow, and he remains the longest-lived Goliath of the Herd of Storms for many centuries. He lives to see his very, very small gnomish nieces and nephews, as well as Vax and Keyleth’s, as they take in several children of their own- a tiefling found beaten and bruised on the edges of Stilben, a little girl whose parents left her in the care of family members and never returned, a small, broken-winged silver dragon who prefers to remain in the form of a human. Grog lives to see Westruun restored, sees Whitestone grow and thrive, despite its many hardships. He lives to see Cassandra and Kynan marry, lives to see his array of nieces and nephews grow and grow, and in time he helps teach them to read and write, learning more along with them. He writes a book or two of his own, in the end. Scanlan calls on Ioun obnoxiously, makes damn sure that copies end up in her hands. 

“My brother wrote these,” he says proudly. “Best of the best. Figured you’d want an exclusive copy or two!” She smiles, face crinkling like the softness of old paper, and takes them with reverence. 

Vax does die, eventually, an old man with silver hair and far too many scars. Vex and Percy leave Whitestone for the first time in many years to be by his side. Keyleth falls, sobbing, into Vex’s arms when she sees them. Pike and Scanlan stay, too, soft voices singing Vax to rest, the Everlight’s warmth all around him. Vex shatters when she sees his face, strokes tears from his weathered cheeks and kisses his forehead. She should be the same age. They should be the same age.

Keyleth sobs, opposite her sister, and Percy holds her, arms wrapped around her shoulders.

“This is a happy day,” he whispers to her. “Today he goes to rest.” She weeps harder, but it’s a good weeping.

It’s cathartic.

She holds Vax’s hand as he is taken, and raven feathers drift from the ceiling as his last breath leaves him. Snowdrops sprout from the earth beneath him, and Vex and Keyleth link hands over his stilled chest.

All is well.

Whitestone forgets, in time, that the de Rolos weren’t always this kind of people. They forget that the couple who rule with stoic kindness and mount such merciless defense were not always there, that the monsters they drag the criminals to did not always carry out the executions. The living de Rolos, Cassandra’s family, her descendants remain. They learn to rule at Percy and Vex’s hand, learn the fine balance of governance and mercy from two who walk it so carefully. Though they seem immortal, seem constant, there is always a fear in the heart of each living de Rolo that the heads of their family will fall. Their legacy would be such a shadow to live in. Their graves would be so deep. 

It’s strange, even still, that they are so dearly beloved. Percy shies away, does his best to distance himself from his nieces and nephews, their children, their children’s children. All of them unmistakably de Rolos, with dark hair and clever hands and soft smiles, all of them such reflections of his own lost siblings. All of them reminders of the family he and Vex won’t have. She brought it up, when his eyes had just turned black and her stomach had just begun to shift in thirst. Her voice was wistful, but they both immediately recognized the realization in the other.

“We can’t,” she said, dimming her own smile. “We shouldn’t.”

“No,” Percy agreed, pressing his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She pulled him close, hands strong at his waist. “We have so many to take care of. It’s not- it just isn’t to be.”

“You’d be a wonderful mother.” He held her, his face buried in the dark of her hair, pressed to her temple. She laughed, choked, into his shoulder. He kissed her hair, and she could feel his sorrow. Seven children, she thought, aching. He must have always wanted a big family. She clung to him, thinking softly, painfully, of little quarter-elves with sharp ears and soft smiles and sweet little spectacles. Riding Trinket, chasing Vax, learning to read beside Percy. She thought of children with black eyes and sharp teeth and smoke trailing their step, wracked by their parents’ pain, and she remembered herself.

Some nights she dreams of a little girl, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with Percy’s fine features and her mother’s wry grin and those tell-tale petal-shaped ears. She dreams of being a mother, of being a monster, of devouring her own daughter. She wakes and weeps and reminds herself. Percy whispers to her of vague half-wishes, the feeling of tinkering in his study while a little girl reads, leaning her back against his side, close and warm, trusting and intimate. The feeling of deep, protective, painful love. The sound of laughter, borrowed from a memory of Cassandra, as he chases her through the halls. The sound of a gunshot as he watches her tiny, fragile body bleed out in the snow. 

There are some things they can never be trusted with again. There are some things they never dare to try. Vex tells Vax, in those early years, that she would have named her Vesper. Vesper Elaina. His fingers dig into her, deep and heartbroken, as if her pain is his. Cassandra never named any of her own children Vesper, and part of Vex resents the gesture.

With time, Percy and Vex become figures of authority, figures of legend. The Shadow Prince and the Grand Huntress, whispered about until the whispers are the truth. Rarely seen, but often mentioned, kind to their subjects but merciless to their enemies, born under the sun but ever under the dominion of shadow. 

They say he sold his soul, bound himself in darkness for the life of the woman he loved. They say she came back wrong, hungry and wild, and that he offered himself to her until she recognized him. They say that the two of them have governed Whitestone for centuries, that in times of danger, or threat of war, their monsters come to make peace. That Whitestone has a guard but no army because it doesn’t need one. That Whitestone is most beautiful at night because that’s the only time their rulers can come out. That every midnight festival and moonlit ball is a token of love from one to the other, a fragment of beautiful darkness passed from lover to lover. 

They say that Whitestone once had another pair of monsters, who didn’t care for their city at all, and that the Prince and his Huntress tore them down, cast them out, and pulled the city back together. They say there was a Princess, all steel and sunlight, who loved her brother but couldn’t help him, who rebuilt Whitestone and left it in his hands, hoping he could keep it safe. That the Huntress had a brother who strode through the darkness and carried away the dead, who settled happily beside his own lovers, both of them as bright and beautiful as the sun itself. They say that Whitestone is lucky, that Whitestone is blessed, for though Pelor’s light lasted only until that first sunset of the de Rolo family and never returned, the Moonweaver and the Raven Queen and all the gods and good creatures who live in the shadows have offered their own blessings in turn. They say that Whitestone is darkened, but that it shines all the fairer in shadow.

They hope it is true.

Sometimes it is.

**Author's Note:**

> hope y'all liked it, hope it didn't suck!


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